


Whatever It Takes

by Perosha



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kingdom Hearts III, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Shitty Science Dad, awkwardly bonding with your estranged father over being in a cult together that one time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 20:19:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18453926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perosha/pseuds/Perosha
Summary: [KH3, post-KH3] Xion knows there's nothing to worry about anymore, but that doesn't stop the nightmares.





	Whatever It Takes

**Author's Note:**

> i'm tired of working on this so here you go. might edit/delete later

In the worst of the nightmares she has no face at all, only a shining smoothness no better than a mannequin, the lidless eyes cloudy like a corpse’s. No less unnerving are the other dreams, the ones where she is Ansem or Xemnas or the old man himself, once even a wicked Roxas with shining yellow eyes. That time, her fitful waking is loud enough to rouse Lea in the next room over, sleeping in a chair at Isa’s bedside.

“Hey, it’s okay, Xion.” His papery smile does not conceal the exhaustion in his face, unmarked by green teardrops. “It was just a bad dream, all right? They’re gone for good—all of ‘em. Everything’s okay now.”

She’s grateful that he sits on the edge of the bed until she falls asleep again, but it doesn’t stop the dreams from coming back.

Lea and Roxas haven’t asked her yet about her brief time among the seekers, out of respect, and even if they had, Xion doesn’t know what she would say. In any case there’s too much else to do in the immediate aftermath of battle, too many tourniquets to tie and too much broken glass to sweep up. The sheer messiness of the others’ collective humanity intimidates her. All her life, the Organization had been monotony and discipline and harsh silences between; here in Radiant Garden everything is different. People laugh and cry and yell at one another, sometimes all in the same day. People apologize.

“You’ll get used to it,” Lea assures her over ice cream, the first time the three of them have it together. They sit on the castle battlements as if it were the clock tower in Twilight Town, a place temporarily barred to them until they have a safe route through the darkness. “I mean...I guess we’re all tryin’ to get used to this whole _being people_ thing. But practice makes perfect. Got it memorized?”

He smiles at her, and she smiles back, if weakly. She feels as tired as he looks.

* * *

Reviving was like drifting up from the bottom of the sea, weightless, thoughtless, floating. Then light and life, but slowly, until at last some threshold was crossed and she _was_ again, aware of her body, standing in the shadow of a crumbling pillar of carved and blasted stone. A hot wind blew dust into her mouth. The unfamiliar landscape around her was barren and sickly, weathered Keyblades jutting up from the earth like hundreds of broken teeth, standing guard long after their wielders had rotted away where they fell.

The last thing she remembered was…Roxas.

Roxas had destroyed her, as she’d forced him to.

And then...

Saïx stepped forward. Beside him, Xemnas stood with his hands behind his back, his expression passive except for a faint smile that curled the edges of his mouth, the closest she’d ever seen him to amusement.

Why were they here? Where _was_ here?

She felt...strange. Her thoughts were disjointed. Sluggish.

“That took long enough.” Saïx looked just as he always had, the X-shaped scar slashed into his face tightening as he scowled. She had no idea how long it had been since the fight on the clock tower. “Number _i._ Can you hear me?”

Saïx and Xemnas. Just like the first time that she had awakened in Castle Oblivion. Only this time…This time something was...different.

“Where’s...Roxas?”

Her voice sounded unrecognizable to her, as if she hadn’t used it in a long time. Maybe she hadn’t. She didn’t know.

Xemnas answered her in his slow and solemn way.

“Roxas is no more.” He nodded. “You are here to take his place among our number. The fated clash will soon be upon us.”

Take...his place?

“You have a new purpose now, puppet.”

Already she felt it beating inside her, a dark alien vein wrapped around her heart, pulsing to the tainted rhythm of all the memories that hurt.

* * *

She begins to suspect that she’s breaking again, just like she did the first time. It’s the only explanation she can come up with for why she aches so often.

After all, nothing is wrong anymore, is it? Xehanort is gone, has been gone for days, and the ups and downs of ordinary activity are paltry in comparison to his malevolence. Roxas is here, and so is Axel—Lea—and every day so far the three of them have spent time together, eating sea salt ice cream the way they used to do. That’s all she’s ever wanted, for the three of them to be together. Now they are.

No Xehanort, no Organization, and not even the threat of the Heartless, except for the occasional stray...and yet something inside Xion still gnaws at her fitfully, down at the bottom. When she’s talking with her friends she often forgets that it’s there, but it comes back every night after she falls asleep, or sometimes before, when she’s staring at the ceiling. She lays in bed and shivers until sleep drags her below the surface, and in sleep she isn’t Xion anymore, only a puppet, only a silent husk with burnished yellow eyes.

* * *

If she’d seen the stranger before (and she must have, if they were all telling the truth) then she did not remember it, or recognize him. He was a tall man, lean and hollow-faced, pallid in the way of those for whom sunlight and fresh air were unnecessary distractions from darker work. He had to bend down to peer at her beneath the raised hood of her coat.

“Let’s have a look at you, then.”

What his eyes had once been, she did not know. Like hers, they were gold now, and shone with a sinister curiosity when whatever he saw in her seemed to please him. He grinned, and the grin was frightening, so much so that if she hadn’t stopped herself, she would have instinctively stepped backwards to put a safe distance between them. The man caught her chin, looking her features over with clinical interest, and then straightened and turned away, dismissive.

“I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” he told Saïx. “The unit is fully operational, as I assured you all it would be. No adjustments appear necessary.”

“For now. You weren’t there to watch it go to pieces the first time.”

“A fact you are to blame for, if I’m not mistaken?”

Saïx didn’t reply, and the tall man laughed. An unpleasant sound, high and cold, more cold than any laugh Xion had ever heard.

“Well, never mind the particulars. But I can confirm that the underlying template is superior to the original one I used. Oh yes...I’m certain that whatever defects it presented in my absence will not recur.”

“We can afford nothing less.” Saïx’s lip curled as he glanced to her, not bothering to meet her gaze, as if her existence still disgusted him. Even now, when they shared the same eyes, the same heartbeat. “We’ll see how this one performs. In the meantime, continue with your work. We need many more...and we’ve no margin for error this close to the end. They must all be flawless.”

“Oh, you need have no fear on that account. Rest assured that I’ve come a long way since the start of the project. So long as the heart is properly emplaced, even if taken from outside of time, a Replica should respond to it and reconstitute accordingly. You’ll have no shortage of adequate vessels.”

“We’ll believe that when you’ve delivered them. This is only a start.”

_Replica..._

Darkness had cobwebbed over her mind, but in one corner of it the word stirred some memory. Replica...She knew that word. She was a Replica, wasn’t she? Yes...that was right. She’d learned that, but she’d never really understood what it meant. It hadn’t made sense when she’d read about it in the database, the documents a confusing jumble of scientific notes and experiment logs. None of them had answered her questions, not the way she had hoped they would. All she’d understood was that she wasn’t supposed to exist.

Now it was different. Now she had a reason to be.

“...to your purposes,” the man was saying to Saïx. “But I can assure you that it’s hardly any concern of mine. Leave me to my work unfettered, and I shall leave you all to yours. That was the agreement, was it not?”

“As it suits you.”

Saïx turned away, and the other man did too, then stopped himself. A peculiar flicker passed across his sallow face, an expression she couldn’t identify.

“One more piece of data. Who are you, girl?”

_Xehanort._

Her lips parted to say the word, but she caught herself before she did, forcing her foggy mind to keep thinking. That wasn’t right, was it? She wasn’t called that. Xehanort was the old man she’d seen only once from afar, hunched and brooding, absorbed in his own thoughts. She was someone else.

_Sora?_

No, that wasn’t right either.

It took her a few moments to remember.

“My name is...Xion.”

“Xion...Ah yes, that was the designation that Xemnas gave you, wasn’t it? How amusing.”

“Who...are you?”

“Who am I?” The stranger grinned wider, like something predatory, a hyena or a viper. _“I_ am your creator, Xion _._ You may call me Vexen.”

Xion shivered when he placed a hand on the top of her head.

* * *

The nightmares aren’t hers alone, she discovers. Small comfort. It doesn’t mean she isn’t broken—just that she has fellow travelers in her brokenness—and one night when insomnia drives her to the kitchen at an hour when no one should be awake, she finds Terra, Aqua, and Ventus sitting there with mugs of tea, Terra falling asleep on Aqua’s shoulder, breathing loudly through the last of his sobs while Ven rubs his back. Aqua tries to smile to Xion reassuringly, and can’t quite.

“We just need time,” she sighs when the three leave the kitchen. “All of us.”

Out of everyone licking their wounds in the castle, the only person who seems unhurt is Sora, but Xion isn’t sure whether that’s really true. He smiles often enough, and his laughter sounds sincere, but when he tracks her down in the courtyard a week after it’s all over, he’s less blisteringly cheerful than she would have predicted.

“I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come thank you, Xion. There’s been a lot going on, and...Well, you know.”

“Thank me?” She doesn’t understand. “What do you want to thank me for?”

“For helping out. I couldn’t have done what I did if I hadn’t had all of you guys backing me up.”

“I wasn’t much help. I was...with them.” That’s all she can say about it. “And before that, when I was in the Organization…I almost destroyed you. Taking all your memories.”

“Come on, you know that doesn’t count. It’s not like you did it on purpose.”

There’s the grin she’s been expecting, flashed quickly but then gone, put away for safekeeping.

“You’re not...mad at me?” she tries.

“Huh? Why would I be mad at you?”

“Because I hurt you.”

He shrugs, as if that’s all the defense this crime needs to earn an acquittal, and then folds his hands behind his head, his expression thoughtful as he regards her.

“You know,” he says, “I know we’ve never really met, but...it still feels like I know you already. Not just because you look a lot like Kairi. I guess...it’s because of Roxas.”

“I feel that way too.” She’s seen so many of his memories, after all—has nearly drowned in them more than once—often enough that it’s almost surreal to actually talk to him like this, face-to-face. Only the scent of flowers from the gardens below proves this isn’t another dream about him. “Sora, I...Thank you. For...everything you did for Roxas. And for me.”

“You’re welcome, Xion. But, hey—you’ll have to thank a lot more people than just me.” Another one of those grins, just as earnest, but just as brief. “You weren’t here to see it, but it was a team effort. We’re all glad you’re back.”

“I’m glad too.”

Even though it’s true, there’s just enough dissonance in her voice to make Sora perk up.

“Hey, Xion...are you okay? You sound kind of worried.”

“It’s nothing.” She bites her lip and looks away, gazing out at the town huddled below. “I’m just...tired. I keep having bad dreams.”

She hadn’t meant to say that, and her own honesty surprises her. Why is it so easy to talk to him, of all people?

“Bad dreams, huh? That stinks. I think that’s happening to a lot of us right now.”

“You too?”

Sora shrugs again.

“We’ve all been through a lot,” he says matter-of-factly. “Especially all of you guys. Maybe a few nightmares aren’t that weird, after everything that’s happened.”

To her surprise, the rest of her worries almost tumble out of her into this bright-hearted boy’s lap, right there on the sunlit parapet, but she catches herself in time. Instead she draws a deep breath and clutches the balcony railing tightly with one hand, blinking away the threat of tears in the corners of her eyes.

* * *

How aware she was of herself depended on the circumstances. It was much like sleepwalking, and sometimes she would find herself in a new place or among new people without remembering how she had gotten there. Some of the other seekers she saw often, and some almost never, but despite their growing numbers there weren’t yet enough of them to do what had to be done. Until all was ready, their orders were simple. Watch. Wait. Prepare.

A few of them she recognized, or thought she did. Their faces recalled scattered memories she couldn’t quite catch hold of. But most would have been strangers to her even without the black fog that had engulfed her insides and dampened all feeling.

One such stranger she encountered the day he first joined their number. The boy stepped out of the swirling darkness ahead of Vexen, and Xion stared at him, confused in the part of her that still could be, as all the others gathered here took stock of the newcomer in turn.

Why had Riku joined them?

She watched him stride forward with head held high, sword in hand.

No...This couldn’t be Riku, could it? She had...she had met Riku, she was almost sure of it, and this boy was younger, his yellow eyes shining with arrogant malice without any blindfold to hide them. His weapon was the same, though, and so was his face, if softer than she remembered, lacking the delicate sculpting of age that had molded him from boy to young man. Another Riku, then...someone different to who she had met. Like some of the others, he had to have been dragged here through the dark seas of a bygone time, his heart snatched from somewhen to fulfill their shared destiny. Or...or maybe....

It was so hard to think. Her own pulse in her ears was deafening.

“So you’re the other one.” Riku stopped in front of her to size her up with obvious disdain, his yellow eyes half-lidded. “I guess you’re supposed to be a copy of Kairi, huh? Lame.”

“I’m not...Kairi.”

“Whatever.” He tossed his head, his silvery hair already dirty from the winds that blew red dust across this dreary landscape. “Guess the guy in charge wanted the whole set, huh? Sora, Kairi, and Riku. What a joke.”

He glanced over his shoulder at one of the others leaning against a column of stone, the masked boy whose face Xion knew without seeing it, the boy whose twisted laugh was like a parody of the joyful one she’d heard in so many dreams. Sora, but not Sora.

But how could that be, though? She herself was Sora. Or...no...

“Riku…” she managed to say, but the boy with the shape of him tensed, his eyes flashing.

“Don’t call me that.” He snorted and jerked his head, as if the name were a fly that had buzzed too close. “I’m way better than him. He’s a wimp.”

Vexen had been watching with faint displeasure as the boy paced the ring of strangers; now he stepped forward.

“I trust,” he said, “that you’ll conduct yourself with more dignity than you’ve shown previous. Ill manners are to no purpose here.”

“Who cares? As long as I’m strong enough.” Riku who was not Riku held up an open palm, conjuring in it a ball of darkfire that crackled in the dry air before being dismissed. “He said that’s all that matters to him. That I’m strong enough to tame the darkness.”

“The truth of that remains to be seen. You’ve yet to prove yourself as capable as you seem to think...or do you not remember why you’re here in the first place?”

“That doesn’t matter,” the boy bristled. “And you’re one to talk, you old creep. You can’t even put up a fight. You got burnt to a crisp.”

Vexen’s scowl contorted before he forcibly reformed it, as if he wanted to say something heated and had choked it down. The boy scoffed at him and turned away, glaring at Xion, the nearest target for his disdain.

“You’re just like me, aren’t you?” he demanded of her. “Then you’d better be good enough for this. If you’re not, they’ll think I’m weak too.”

“I’m not...weak.”

“Oh yeah?”

The razor’s edge of his bat-winged blade felt cold against her throat, put there swiftly and without warning, not pressed hard enough to break the skin but threatening it, perhaps, if she were to swallow too hard.

“Then prove it.” He grinned. “Never met another Replica before. Let’s find out who’s better, huh?”

He yelped as Vexen caught him by the coat and dragged him backwards, the cold metal of his blade disappearing from against Xion’s throat. She felt no urge to reach up and touch the skin to search for injury, or move any further away, or react at all. She felt no pain. That was enough.

“Now, now,” said Vexen testily, as the Replica broke free and slunk out of reach, sulking. “None of that, boy. You ought to be nice to your sister.”

He laughed unpleasantly at his own joke, and the Riku Replica sneered at him. Xion said nothing.

* * *

“You really don’t feel any different?”

“No.” Roxas holds up one hand to the cloudless sky and flexes his fingers, making and unmaking a fist, examining it. “At least, not so far. Maybe I’ll notice something eventually.”

He looks exactly the same, as far as Xion can tell. Not a hair out of place as he sits beside her and Lea, their legs dangling off the edge of the battlements.

“If I didn’t know you were a Replica,” Xion says hesitantly, “I wouldn’t be able to tell at all.”

“I guess that’s the point.” Roxas shrugs and lays one hand over his chest. “But what really matters is what’s in here. On the inside.”

“You got that right,” says Lea. He takes another bite of ice cream, looking between Roxas and Xion. “Kinda funny, huh? Replicas...It’s like you two are cousins now or something. Except…” He reflects. “Well, I guess in a way, you always kinda were.”

“What are cousins, again?” Roxas asks. Lea waves his bar of ice cream dismissively.

“Ah, forget it. Bad analogy. I was just tryin’ to say that that you two are connected, that’s all.”

Soon Lea excuses himself, waving goodbye with his empty stick, and they know he’s headed back inside to deliver a bar of ice cream to the room where the recompleted Isa is slowly recovering. Lea spends hours in there sometimes, sitting on the edge of the bed and talking to him, though what they talk about, neither Roxas nor Xion knows for sure. For the moment, neither of them has the nerve to follow Lea’s example and try to bury the hatchet with their former enemy. They both knew Saïx for too long.

The two of them finish their ice cream without Lea. Mid-morning in Radiant Garden is no evening in Twilight Town, but the white stone has its own tarnished beauty, and from this height they can see the whole of the rebuilt town, watching tiny people come and go. There’s always a lot of activity for such a small place. Life is difficult here, they’ve learned, and might be for a long time. The darkness once ripped this world to shreds.

They talk about nothing, the way they always did on the clock tower. There’s plenty of gossip, with so many people here and so much going on, but silences too, long stretches where they both just sit and feel the wind on their faces, listening to the ambient sounds of life coming up to them from below.

Eventually Roxas breaks the comfortable silence. He leans forward and rests his elbows on a low railing that lines the parapet, musing.

“I’m glad I’m back,” he says aloud. “But now that it’s all…‘over,’ I guess...I keep wondering about what’s gonna happen next. Like...what it is I’m supposed to do now, without the Organization and everything. I never really had a chance to think about it before. You know?”

Xion nods and reaches over to touch Roxas’s hand, squeezing it briefly in solidarity. He smiles.

“I guess it’s the same for you, huh, Xion?”

“Yeah.” She rests her chin on the railing. “I’m feeling sort of lost, too. I’m glad I’m here, but I don’t know if…I mean, I’m not sure what we’re all supposed to do. What comes next.”

“I guess we have to decide for ourselves.”

“Maybe Axel will think of something. I mean, Lea.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

They watch a flock of doves take off from a lower level of the tower and soar away over the gardens, scattering. Somewhere far below, a few voices rise and fall, carried on the sweet-smelling wind. A dog barks.

“You know, it’s funny,” Roxas says. “I dunno if I’ve told you yet, but before all this...when I quit the Organization...I kept thinking that I was probably a Replica or something, too. I knew I was special somehow, but I didn’t know much about Sora, so I just thought, you know...maybe that could be the answer. Maybe that was why you and me were connected.” He inspects his outstretched hand again, marveling at its familiarity. “And now I _am_ a Replica, but I can’t even tell. It’s kind of...ironic, I guess. If that’s the right word.”

He drops his hand.

“I still haven’t really gotten my head around it, though. What it all means...how it’s different from before. I guess I should ask Even about it some more.”

Xion sits up straighter, surprised.

“You talked to...him?”

“Yeah, yesterday morning. I mean...I had some questions about this whole thing, so…figured I should ask.”

“You weren’t scared of him?”

“Why would I be scared of him?”

Xion isn’t sure how to answer, and Roxas shrugs apologetically. It reminds her of Sora, now that she’s met him.

“I never really knew him before,” Roxas says, “in the Organization. All I remember is that he was a jerk, but he seems all right now. Well, I mean...he’s kinda weird, but so is everybody else around here.”

“Don’t let Ax—Lea hear you say that.”

They both laugh a little. It feels good to do it; it pushes the gnawing thing inside her further down, where its teeth can’t bite as hard. But the faint ache comes back stronger once silence falls again.

Xion doesn’t finish her ice cream, letting it melt on the stonework beside her. Roxas only notices once he’s done with his own.

“Hey, Xion…”

“Yeah?”

“Are you still having bad dreams?”

His perceptiveness surprises her; she hasn’t mentioned it since the first time. She looks away, guilty.

“I...yes. Not so often, though.”

Not a lie, since it’s not every night without fail. Sometimes, if she’s lucky, she doesn’t dream at all.

“I dunno if it’ll help,” says Roxas, “but if it’s really bothering you...maybe you should talk to Even too.”

“Why?”

He can’t come up with a good answer, and studies what’s left of his ice cream with a thoughtful frown.

“I dunno,” he admits. “It’s just an idea. He made you what you are...what _we_ are...so maybe he can help you somehow. Like...turn your dreams off, or something.”

“I don’t think it works like that.”

“Yeah, probably not.” He sighs and rubs the side of his head with the hand still holding his ice cream stick, accidentally leaving a couple of melted droplets in his hair. He doesn’t seem to notice. “But we’ve got all the time in the world now. I figure...it can’t hurt to ask, right?”

Xion wishes she could be sure.

* * *

“Pathetic.” She had the impression that if he had not been wearing a mask, the boy would have spat off of the edge of the rooftop onto one of the passersby below. “See? Your so-called _friend_ doesn’t even remember you. Shows you what use all that is.”

Was that really Axel down there? It looked just like him, and yet something in his face was...different. The upside-down teardrops were gone, but that wasn’t it—the change was something bigger. Xion stared harder, trying to find it. It was difficult to hold Axel’s face in her mind, to remember what she was looking for in whoever this was.

“Looks like he went and replaced you,” Vanitas observed. “An upgrade, too. That girl’s one of the princesses.”

The girl with him looked just like her own reflection, only red-haired and blue-eyed and older, taller, more confident. She was special, that was why Xion looked like her, but she couldn’t remember her name, and it bothered her faintly, like an itch she couldn’t scratch. The girl...The one from Sora’s memories…

Was that Axel down there? Really?

Axel’s doppelganger must have told a joke, for below them he laughed suddenly and scratched at his temple, and the girl laughed too, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. It sent the faintest pang into Xion’s mind, stabbing up through the layers and layers of fog, but the flicker of insight it produced was snuffed out at once by the hard harsh thing burning inside her heart. She stared at Axel-not Axel, frowning, trying to understand.

It wasn’t that something was missing in him, she decided. It was that nothing was missing in him anymore. There was more of him than there ever had been, overflowing him with sadness and gladness and all the confusion of being, a million tiny fragments clumsily glued back together into the shape of the person she’d known in another life. The man below was not Axel the way a sputtering candle flame was not the sun.

“Guess that’s the real deal down there,” Vanitas said, sounding amused. “That girlfriend of his. You’re just a copy of her, like a crappy knockoff in the discount bin.”

He laughed, maybe too loudly, as it startled a pigeon on a nearby rooftop. They both stepped away from the edge of the roof so that no one below would spot them if they glanced up. From this angle they could no longer see Lea or the girl, only the pointed blue tip of the wizard’s hat, bobbing up and down as the three talked. Vanitas idly kicked at a corner of the rusted rain gutter snaking along the rooftop’s edge.

“We shouldn’t...stay here,” Xion said aloud. “We have to keep looking.”

“Yeah, yeah. Stupid box.”

But she was right, and he knew it, for at once he stepped away from the edge of the rooftop and trudged up the sloping slate tiles, a portal of darkness shivering open to receive him at the roof’s highest point. Xion did not move. She kept staring down at the plaza below where Axel and the girl stood, their faces lit by the familiar orange glow of Twilight Town.

Axel handed the girl a pale blue bar of ice cream. The sight of it stirred something inside Xion, frantic but small, a trapped and tangled memory lashed tightly in a spider’s web of darkness. Something important, fighting to break free but feeble, weakened, lost in the vast blackness her insides had become.

Salty...but sweet, too.

Red and yellow rays of long and shimmering sunset. Laughing faces, red and yellow hair.

“You coming, dummy? I’m not waiting all day.”

The tired memory stopped struggling and sank back into the dark.

* * *

She doesn’t see much of the man who’s now called Even. He’s always hidden away somewhere in the castle, working, working, working, and the few times she crosses paths with him he seems to purposely avoid her, never addressing her except as a courtesy. She’s thankful. The nightmares are neither better nor worse, and with every day that passes she knows she’ll have to ask him about where the cracks in her are, but addressing the problem will make it real and she isn’t ready for that just yet. She knows she’s broken, but there’s no allure in learning exactly how much.

Around the castle, there are plenty of other new faces to memorize, and with every conversation her tiny world expands a little more, every nervous hello and every shared meal and every mundane errand drawing new curves at the edges of the map. Roxas and Axel had been the end, once; Roxas and Lea are just the beginning.

For her the most striking change is the one in Saïx—or Isa, rather. Axel and Saïx hadn’t had much to do with one another, as far as she remembers, but Lea and Isa are yin and yang, back and forth, halves of a whole whose banter has the rhythm of two performers who have worked together for years. For all Lea’s reassurances, she’s wary of Isa, but he doesn’t insult her or do anything untoward, and she senses that perhaps he’s as cautious about her as she is about him, that the time she needs to weigh and measure who he’s become is time that he needs too.

Not that it helps much, on those nights that he’s in her nightmares.

One night, after the glowing eyes of his berserker rage wake her in a cold sweat, she opens the window for some fresh air and catches sight of him away and below, on a balcony under the moon. Not standing in it, as Saïx had done so often, but sitting crumpled in a puddle of moonlight like a marionette with cut strings, gazing upward, his handsome face deeply scarred. He looks both young and old. When he notices her she grips the windowsill tighter, but he doesn’t move or speak, acknowledging her only by bowing his head and looking away (afraid? ashamed? exhausted?). In bed Xion watches the moonlight seep through the window panes, not pulsing like the light of Kingdom Hearts but still, natural.

Saïx had been Xehanort’s, in more ways than she had, for many years. She can only guess what Isa’s nightmares are like.

The next day, watching him slump silently over a breakfast he can’t eat, Xion decides that it’s time. She has to force herself to go talk to the man in the white coat who might or might not have a solution. He scares her a little, of course, but at this point the dreams scare her more.

* * *

She did not see much of Vexen. His work consumed him, and if not then he had been ordered out among the worlds as she so often was, to spy and to pry and to search for what might never be found. The few times she did catch a glimpse of him, he always unsettled her. He rarely spoke to her directly, but was, she thought, always _watching_ her—watching with an intensity that was like a hunger, like he wanted to dissect her and lay all the parts out on a table for inspection. That was probably what he would do, she supposed, if he were ever given permission. Pull apart every piece of her and examine each with glee under a microscope.

That all of the chosen were parts of a whole did not make them friends. They quarreled as often as not anytime a few of them had gathered, and the people they’d been still had their petty feuds, their mutual disdains, their tempers and egos. Some clashed more than others, Xion noticed. Vanitas and the dark Riku fought often like junkyard dogs, snarling, sparring, testing their mettle, and though Vanitas only ever laughed about it all, not-Riku was pricklier, his pride more easily wounded. He was quicker than any of them to draw a blade at the first breath of an insult, and of those he had no shortage, for some of the others who had known him before thought no better of him upon meeting him again. One of these was a woman—the only other woman among their number, a fact which would have surprised Xion if she still could have felt such a thing.

“Ugh, I can’t believe they actually dragged up _that_ piece of junk. I swear, this whole joke gets worse every meeting.”

Larxene looked down at the Riku Replica in front of her as if he were something unsavory, like a piece of roadkill she’d almost stepped in.

“Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. He couldn’t even beat Sora, let alone a whole gang of goody-two-shoes. How’s a useless twerp like him supposed to be any help?”

“Shut up, lady.”

“Ooh! Still feisty.” She grinned and put one finger under the much shorter Replica’s chin, tilting it up to better leer at him. “But we’ll need more than tough talk to get this job done. Got it, toyboy?”

“I’m not a toy.”

“You wish. Check your label again, why don’t you?”

He snarled and jerked his chin out of her grasp.

“I’m _not_ a toy. Shut up, or I’ll shut you up myself.”

Larxene’s peal of laughter would have made Xion wince if she’d been fully present; instead it came to her only distantly, something loud and abrasive happening in another room instead of right in front of her in the empty ruins.

“Those are pretty big words coming from such a short shrimp. And I thought you were touchy the first time around. Give me a break.”

The Replica called Larxene something that made her summon daggers between her curled fingers and swipe at him at eyeblink speed, stabbing deep into his shoulder through his coat. Electricity crackled down her arm and into him, sending him to his knees.

“Don’t push it, brat,” she hissed, her words half-drowned by his yowls of pain. “I don’t have time to play with toys, you got that? I just _break_ them.”

She sent another surge of lightning into the Riku Replica. The high-walled ruins around them bounced his screams in every direction.

“That is _quite_ enough!”

Electricity stopped crackling down Larxene’s arm, so that the Riku Replica crumpled into a heap on the red dirt. She rolled her eyes at the approaching figure of Vexen.

“Oh, lighten up, egghead. What, are you worried I’m going to break him? Then you should have done a better job putting him together.”

“It will be a sad day indeed when I take professional advice from _you,”_ Vexen sneered. “And I’ll thank you not to lay a finger on him henceforth.”

The Riku Replica lay facedown in the dirt between them, twitching.

“Or what?” Larxene asked. “You’ll bore me to death talking about your stupid science fair project? Please. You never cared about putting a few dents in this thing before.”

“Because the Replica Program as you knew it was in a different phase,” was Vexen’s annoyed reply. “The early units needed vigorous testing. But now, every template is of immediate value...and _only_ if whole and functional. You realize I’ve far more work to do than any of you imbeciles? I’ve only just finished with this one, and already you’ve damaged him. Do you suppose _he_ will be pleased about that, hm?”

“Ugh, whatever. Have it your way.” Larxene dismissed her fistful of knives with a wave, then pointed a gloved finger in Vexen’s face, so close to his nose that he scowled. “But don’t get a big head just because the new crowd went out of their way to hire you. I still think you’re useless.”

“I can assure you, I won’t be losing any sleep over the assessment.”

The Riku Replica struggled to his hands and knees, nearly falling but managing to catch himself. Despite the wound in his shoulder, he staggered back to his feet, refusing to clutch at the place where a dark bloodstain had already begun soaking into his sleeve. Vexen caught him by the other arm, making him snarl.

“What was that for, old man?” He shoved Vexen away, wincing. “Don’t touch me. I don’t need any help from you.”

Vexen’s yellow eyes flashed, his long face spasming with barely-contained ire. He caught the back of the Riku Replica’s lowered hood and pulled him closer, like catching a dog by the collar.

 _“Silence,”_ he snapped, as the Replica tried to squirm free. “I will not tolerate such insolence from my own experiment.”

“Let go of me—” The Replica struggled, but Vexen was so much taller than him that it was difficult. “I’m not your stupid _experiment_ anymore. I’m real now.”

“Oh, you always have been,” Vexen said condescendingly. He let the Riku Replica’s hood go, and the Replica brushed red dirt off of his coat, grinding his teeth against the pain of using his injured arm. “And as such, I won’t stand for any juvenile displays of foolishness, is that clear? Your performance is a direct reflection of my capabilities, and I have a reputation to maintain. Any failure from you could jeopardize my prestige within this Organization.”

“Boo-hoo.” The Replica knocked Vexen’s hand away when he reached towards him again. “I don’t care about making you look good. Get lost.”

“Your shoulder needs repair.”

“I’ll heal it myself.” He glared. “Leave me alone. I don’t belong to you.”

“Oh, but I rather think you do, boy.” Vexen’s smile was as unnerving as always. “Oh yes...After all, you are my handiwork, are you not?”

The Replica used a few words Xion had never heard before, language so blistering and vile that Vexen physically recoiled.

“How dare you speak to me that way!”

This only earned Vexen more curses, and he grit his teeth and grabbed the Riku Replica by the back of the coat, glaring down at him.

_“Listen to me, boy.”_

The Replica tried to pull free again, but in so doing accidentally moved his injured shoulder, the pain of which made him yelp and stand still, panting.

“I’ll say this only once, since it’s evident that you don’t quite grasp the situation.” Vexen looked ready to shake him like a ragdoll. “You’ve been taken from whence you came by a method that can’t be repeated, so it would be _prudent_ of you to show more respect. Is that clear? If you get yourself destroyed over petty nonsense, that will be the end of you, now and forever.”

“Is that a threat?”

“A warning. You might consider it advice.”

“Hah! Good one. Like I need advice from a washed-up loser like you.”

On the last word he tried to yank himself out of Vexen’s grip at the same moment that Vexen let him go, so that he lurched away too quickly and fell to his knees, clutching at his shoulder. With a few choice parting words he scrambled up again and was gone, tearing open a dark portal and disappearing, and from across the empty ruins there were scattered laughs from some of the others who’d been watching, Larxene loudest of all. A muscle worked in Vexen’s jaw as he glowered at the spot where the dark portal had vanished.

“An utter travesty,” was all he said, and drew a deep breath through his nose.

Luxord, who had been nearby, wandered close enough to be heard as he idly shuffled his deck of cards.

“You are displeased, I take it,” he remarked, “with how your latest effort turned out?”

“Exceedingly.” Vexen’s sneer contorted his lean face into something even more grotesque than usual. “If at all possible, I would start over again with _that_ one, and do everything completely differently.”

“Ah, but I’m afraid there’s no returning our cards to the dealer once they’ve been doled out. We must all play the hand we’re dealt, mustn’t we? However inconvenient.”

“Indeed.”

Luxord drifted away again rather than listen to whatever half-muttered rant was forthcoming. Vexen was left glaring at nothing, and Xion watched him as numbly as she’d watched all the rest of it, without interest, without thought.

“Yes,” Vexen said again, touching a gloved hand to his chin. His voice was subdued, talking only to himself, as he so often did. “More than anything, I should like to start over with him.”

* * *

She doesn’t know what to expect when she cautiously peeks beyond the half-closed door. She’d imagined clinical sterility, but the study is a mess, coffee mugs and crumb-strewn plates piled haphazardly between stacks of books, papers spilled over every flat surface. It looks like he’s been sleeping in here. There’s some clothes lying scattered, and a blanket draped over the back of a chair.

“Come in, girl,” comes his voice, once he looks up from his scribbling and notices her. “Forgive the disarray. I’ve been very busy.”

Busy, busy, busy—all the castle is, those who live here and those who are only here temporarily, mending their wings. There’s more to do than there are hours in the day to do it, and all of them work hard. But Even seems to be working harder than most. Sitting hunched at his desk he looks tired, the way all of them are tired, except his tiredness might be deeper than any Xion’s yet seen up close, the shadows under his eyes making them look yet larger, almost alien.

“You wanted to speak to me?” he prods. Xion hesitates, one hand still on the doorknob.

“I...yes.” She swallows. “Um...I have...some questions...”

“I thought you might, sooner or later.”

He clears off enough books and papers to give her a place to sit across from him in the only other chair, which is a little too tall for her, so that the toes of her boots only scrape the floor.

In her head she understands that this person must be different now, the way the others she remembers are different, the way Lea is different from Axel: warmer, weaker, more unsure. Even’s large eyes are green, not gold. But that old hungry look is still there as he assesses her, and it makes her nervous. She forces herself not to fidget, and her hands resting on her knees curl into gentle fists.

“I think…” She takes a deep breath. “I think I’m...breaking again.”

“‘Breaking again’? Whatever do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. That’s why I wanted to...to ask. I thought you might know what’s wrong...”

She trails off, but he seems to understand and pushes his chair back.

“Well. Let’s have a look at you, then.”

He’s so much taller than her that he has bend quite far to reach her eye level in her chair. He doesn’t touch her chin except carefully, after hesitating for permission, and when she flinches away he lets go at once, so that she has to nod to let him do it again. What he’s looking for in her face, she can’t guess, but whatever he sees there doesn’t seem to worry him, because he doesn’t study her for long.

“I see no cause for concern,” he says, “at least superficially.” His curiosity is obvious still, but less intimidating. “What is it you’re worried about, exactly? What’s happening?”

“I keep having these...dreams.” Her fists on her knees clench tighter. “Bad dreams.”

“About Xehanort, I imagine?”

She nods.

“Well, you’re hardly alone in that respect. Perhaps it’s to be expected.”

“That’s what Sora said.”

“He’s not wrong.” Even sits down again, somewhat heavily. “We’ve all been through a great deal. It’s unreasonable to think any of us could remain unscathed.”

“I thought…” Xion’s throat tightens, but she forces the rest of the thought out. “I’ve been thinking that maybe...he...isn’t really gone from my heart. Since I’m a Replica, and I’m supposed to copy other people. Maybe somewhere...inside, I’m still part of him. And that’s why I keep having—”

“No.”

The answer is so immediate that Xion is surprised into silence.

“You’ve no remnant of Xehanort’s heart inside you,” he says matter-of-factly. “It would be immediately apparent to me if you did.”

“How do you know, though? How can you really be sure?”

“Because I made you.”

He pulls a book from the edge of the desk closer, as if he’s going to flip through it to check something, but doesn’t.

“Is it...really that simple?” Xion asks.

“Simple? Certainly not. Nothing about you is ‘simple’ in the least. But I can assure you that Xehanort’s heart is well and truly gone from you, as much as it is from anyone else.”

She thinks of Isa sitting alone in the moonlight, of Terra who sometimes goes quiet for hours.

“Now,” Even continues, “I will be the first to admit that the fruits of the Replica Program exceeded my own expectations. Indeed, I would venture to say that my results exceeded even the parameters of the underlying theory itself. But regardless, I’m certain that you’ve no chance of harboring a heart that isn’t your own without it being noticeable to a trained observer.”

She wants to believe him. She’s not sure she can. It seems like too much to hope for.

“I just thought something might have gone...wrong, again,” she admits. “Because I’m sort of…”

“Sort of what?”

“In the Organization, the first time...Saïx always called me a...mistake...”

The immediacy, the intensity, of his indignation mildly startles her.

“Hmph! Did he now? Well then. I’ll be having words with _him_ at some point, I can assure you. A ‘mistake,’ indeed…What a ridiculous notion…” He scowls at her, as if worried she agrees. “You’re not a mistake, girl, not by any stretch of the imagination. I should hope that would be obvious.”

“But I never worked right. I kept breaking, and now…”

“And what does that mean?” he demands. “You said ‘breaking again,’ but what is ‘again’? You’ve experienced some sort of problem before?”

“I just thought…” Her stomach clenches, remembering. “I thought maybe my dreams had something to do with...what happened before, the first time. When I was...falling apart. I had nightmares back then too.”

“Falling apart in what way?”

Xion doesn’t answer. She’s not sure how.

After a brief silence, waiting for her to reply, Even exhales through his nose.

“Xion,” he says, “I’m afraid I know far less about you than I would like. Roxas has mentioned a few things, but I wasn’t…” He grimaces. “I wasn’t...present, the way I’d planned to be. I don’t know what you went through in the Organization, or what sort of life you’ve lived so far. But given the circumstances you were born into, I can only assume your existence was unhappy.”

“Not all of it,” Xion says. “Not always. Just...”

Her throat tightens as hard as her stomach. She stares at the mess of papers on the tabletop, not seeing them.

“Just...at the end. I guess.”

“And how did it end, girl? What happened to you?”

It takes her a long time to decide whether to explain.

She realizes when she does that she hasn’t ever told anyone the whole story, not start to finish. Roxas and Lea know much of it from having been there, and Riku knows some, and even Sora and some of the others she’s only just met have heard the anecdotes she’s happy to share. But there are many that she isn’t, and yet she can’t skip over those now or else the story won’t make sense, not to someone who wasn’t there and doesn’t know anything at all.

It’s not like talking, at least not after the first few minutes, once she finds the ugly rhythm of the tale. It’s more like pulling teeth or drawing blood. Her jagged life spills out of her in fits and starts, hesitant at first and then faster and hoarser, until tears come and she grits her teeth against them, talking through sobs, unable to stop now that she’s started.

“—and I didn’t _know,_ I didn’t know I was a R-Replica, I didn’t kn-know... _anything_ and n-no one—ever—told me...I didn’t know what was h-happening to me and I was so _scared—_ all the _time—”_

In hiccuping gasps she unravels the knotted skein of the twelve months that were for her a lifetime, all the confusion and fear that had grown from a rotten seed to throttle her, until after silence and lies and running away from the Organization more than once, it became clear that either she or Roxas would have to perish. That at least had been an easy choice, if frightening. She describes it as best as she can: the machines that warped her body, luring Roxas to the clock tower wearing a face she’d seen in her dreams, the fight she’d planned to lose.

And then, after an absence she could not remember, she woke dimly in the badlands...

“What’s... _wrong..._ with...me?” Her nails dig into her scalp as she clutches her bowed head, shoulders shaking, sea salt tears spilling into her lap. “It’s over now, everything’s f-fine but it s-still... _hurts_ and I keeping having these _…_ d-dreams...about _him…_ about all of them…”

She doesn’t realize he’s gotten up until a hand touches the top of her head. Xion flinches, scrunching into herself, but she can no more control her crying than she can sprout wings and fly, and the hand on her head stays there. Everything inside hurts. Nothing is wrong, nothing is wrong, over and over she chants in her heart that nothing is wrong but it hurts, it hurts, it _hurts…_

She cries so hard for so long that the end of it feels like groggily waking from a nap. When she comes to enough to look up, she finds him sitting across from her again, watching her with a look that it takes her a moment to recognize: sympathy. It looks peculiar on his already peculiar features.

“Will you tell me something, Xion?”

Xion hiccups, wiping her face on her sleeve. Even unknots his silk necktie and passes it across the desk, and after he nods to her, she uses it as a handkerchief, wiping her face.

“Xion,” he says, “when you began to malfunction—once you understood the cause of the problem—why did you not tell your friends?”

She gulps and wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand, the other still holding the wadded necktie.

“I understand,” he says, “that the Organization as a whole would have cared nothing for your predicament, but would your friends not have helped you? If you had asked it of them. If you had explained everything.”

“I c-couldn’t.” She clutches the ball of silk tightly. “They wouldn’t have...they wouldn’t have understood. Especially Roxas...I had to trick him, or else he never would have...”

“You didn’t feel as though you could trust them?”

“I don’t know,” she says miserably. “I _wanted_ to tell them, I just...couldn’t. It was...something I felt like...like I had to do myself. Because...everything was all my fault in the first place. I had to make things right, even if...” She shudders. “Even if...I had to die, and...have everyone forget about me. That was better than just...doing nothing…”

She trails off, swallowing hard to force the lump in her throat back down.

“Do you think...I did the right thing?”

It’s more wondering aloud, really, than actually asking for this stranger’s opinion, but he answers her anyway.

“I think,” he says, “that you did something very brave. Something that not many would have been able to do. You’re a very strong girl.”

“No, I’m not.” She wrings at the necktie. “If I was strong, then I wouldn’t be so...I wouldn’t be like this. I wouldn’t have nightmares...”

“That’s hardly relevant data.”

Xion bites her lip, gazing into her tearstained lap.

“I wish I could just...forget all the awful things that happened. Especially with...with _them,_ after I came back.” She hardly recognizes her own voice, hoarse as it is. “It was like...I could f-feel his heart inside me, telling me what to do...hurting me all the time...”

“I know, girl,” Even says quietly. “I felt it too.”

* * *

“Hey there, poppet. Long time no see.”

She didn’t return Xigbar’s grin, but even this inaction somehow amused him.

“Whoa there, chatterbox, slow down.”

He laughed and scratched at his scarred cheek. As always he seemed more aloof and amused than anything else, as if nothing that happened in this great barren desert could surprise him, as if he’d seen it all before. Leaning with his back to one of the high stone pillars, he folded his arms and smirked at her, his lone eye bright in the shadows.

“Always knew you were cut out for the big leagues, kiddo. Unlike some of the other recruits around here...”

Demyx looked up from tuning his sitar.

“Hey, man, you guys are the ones who invited me back. Can’t act like you didn’t know what you were signing up for.”

“As if.” Xigbar laughed again. “But I guess even the best team needs to keep a few benchwarmers on the sidelines, huh? Just in case.”

Demyx shrugged off this criticism, looking from Xigbar over to Xion, who stood passive and unconcerned, ignoring their talk, though they were only feet away from her. There were no orders at the moment, and so nothing else mattered. Nothing would until the great battle unfolded at last, the battle she had been waiting for since she had woken, since she had cast her heart aside and dove back into the running streams of time, since she had first heard the story from her master in the earliest days of her training, before the Keyblade had even come to her.

“So you’re for sure takin’ up a starting spot, huh?” Demyx asked, more to himself than to her. “Man, that’s a real curveball. Never woulda guessed.” He looked at her curiously. “So, uh...How’s it goin’, Xion? Been a while...at least, I think it has. Can’t remember you all that well for some reason...”

Did she know this person? She, too, couldn’t remember well enough to decide. Maybe...a long time ago, there had been someone like this...somewhere. In a...castle?

“Yo, hey? Earth to Xion?”

He waved a hand in front of her face. A twinge of annoyance penetrated the veil of her mind, enough that she frowned up at him, but Demyx only shook his head.

“Man, that’s spooky. Look at her. Lights are on, but nobody’s home.”

“What do you expect?” Xigbar folded his arms, smirking as he regarded the small, silent figure between them. “She’s not like you and me, y’know. She was custom built for this whole heart-transplant operation. A genuine Replica.”

“Who isn’t nowadays?”

Xigbar laughed loudly enough to make Xion tilt her head to look up at him.

“Fair enough. But our little poppet’s still special, isn’t that right?” He leered, his eye bright with amusement. “She’s a live Replica. Not just an empty body waitin’ on a heart...she was out walkin’ and talkin’ all by herself, even from day one. Real neat party trick you pulled there, poppet. I’ve seen hearts do plenty of crazy things in my time, but you might just take the cake.”

His voice barely registered for her, no more than ambient noise, no more meaningful than the winds moaning through the cracked ruins. Yet down below, far down inside, there was something within her that was cognizant enough to be annoyed, something or someone that had once known both these people in front of her. A stranger who’d lived in her body, who had fragmented memories of these voices and more, of missions, of twilights, of idle words passed back and forth on the edge of a tall tower...

“We’re gettin’ there,” Xigbar was saying, “but there’s still a ways to go. Best hope we’re ready when the countdown finally hits zero. Been waitin’ on this showdown a long time.”

“Whatever, man. You guys have fun with all that…sounds like some seriously major stress to me. Blegh.”

“Hey, everybody’s gotta pull their weight. Even chatty little poppet over here. And hey, who knows?” He chuckled. “Maybe this time around, she’ll turn out to actually be worth the investment.”

Xion frowned up at him.

“I’m worth...more than you. I have...the Keyblade...”

This made Xigbar laugh harder than he ever yet had.

* * *

It isn’t that she can’t talk to Roxas and Lea. She talks to them all the time—every day, over ice cream, about anything and everything. But the more they talk about, the more memories they share, the more Xion finds that there are certain things she can’t quite say. Not to them. At least not yet.

Part of her feels guilty for it; they’re her best friends, after all. She should be able to tell them anything. That’s what best friends are supposed to do (or so she’s been told), and so logically, her occasional silences and lies by omission must make her a bad friend.

And yet…

And yet, it’s always been this way, hasn’t it?

She didn’t tell them a lot of things, the first time. The first time, she was afraid to talk to them, worried first over how they would react and worried later that they would stop her, that they wouldn’t understand or wouldn’t want to help her. Axel hadn’t. He did his best to thwart her at every turn, hiding the truth once he learned it and physically stopping her once she learned it too. She doesn’t like those memories, but they’re there in the back corner, same as the good ones.

_Oh, you're not sure? What, did they forget to build you with common sense?_

Lea’s apologized, many times in fact, and she’s grateful. Really. But it doesn’t make it easier to talk to him about some of the things that hurt the worst. She’s not sure what she’s afraid of, exactly, because he’s so clumsy and contrite that there’s no chance he would get angry with her no matter what she ended up saying. It’s just...complicated, and so she puts it off, not knowing what to say or how to feel, wishing she could just forget all the unpleasantness, somehow. Just make all the bad parts of the past dissolve away and be forgotten, the way she herself once was.

“It’s okay, Ax—I mean, Lea,” she tells him, the next time it all comes up. She means it. “You did your best.”

“No, I didn’t.” He grimaces, as though remembering it all physically pains him. “That’s just it, Xion. I wanted to do the right thing, I guess, but I kinda...screwed it all up.” A pause seemed to add _I do that a lot._ “I should’ve told you what was going on, as soon as I figured things out. And I shoulda helped you out when you needed it, instead of jerkin’ you around and...well, and lyin’ to you so much. That’s not what friends are supposed to do.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.” He sighs, beleaguered. “Look, Xion, I was selfish. Let’s say...Axel was selfish. But I’m not like that anymore, you got it?” He hits a thumb to his chest. “This is the new and improved me. The real deal.”

“The real Lea.”

“Yeah, that’s right. The real Lea. Got it memorized?”

_Well, stop remembering. Nothing good will come of it. Turn around and go home, Xion._

“I mean it, Xion. I’m sorry.” He scratches the back of his head. “All that stuff’s in the past now. From now on, things are gonna be great. I promise.”

“How do you know?”

Lea smiles, and for once it isn’t forced, or at least not as much as it has been. Like he’s finally starting to believe himself when he does it.

“How do I know? ‘Cuz we’re gonna work real hard for it, that’s how.” He ruffles her hair, an affectionate gesture familiar from many evenings on the clock tower. “You got that, Xion? From now on, we’re gonna do whatever we gotta to make things better. Whatever it takes.”

* * *

For his own reasons, the old man kept his distance from the rest of them, and so it fell to his younger self to give orders, when there were orders to give. Often there weren’t. They could do little of real value until the light gathered itself together, and so outside of taunting them, and of questing for the relic that the old man wanted, they were left to their own pursuits. Xion had none. She was not always cognizant enough to want to do anything or go anywhere, and during these lapses she defaulted to their meeting place for lack of elsewhere to be, standing in the shadows of the stone ruins that had in ancient days been something of significance to those who wielded the Keyblade.

A city? A temple? A mausoleum?

She did not wonder.

Today the young man was here, seemingly to no purpose. He sat on a broken stone slab as though it were an outcrop overlooking the sea, one arm draped over his bent knee, the other leg dangling, the yellow eyes they all shared looking natural on him in a way they didn’t on anyone else. Beside him like a guardian stood another whom Xion had only met here, a creature in the shape of a man who called himself Ansem, who had been seeking what they all sought for longer than any. To Xion’s clouded memory, he both was and was not Xemnas. He stood with his arms folded over his chest, looking out over the dusty ocean of dead Keyblades, his expression muted.

They were talking, or rather, the young Xehanort was talking and his companion only listened. Xion couldn’t hear them, though she was close enough to. She stood blank and quiet, lost inside her own numbness.

Her stillness and silence gradually caught the young man’s attention, moreso the more time passed without her stirring at all. When he stared over at her for a long moment, Xion interpreted it as a command and walked up to the boulder, her footsteps muffled in the dust. She gazed up at the pair of them, waiting.

Perhaps there were orders?

But no orders came. The young man sized her up with a smile, never any of the others’ wide and wicked grins but always soft, confident. He studied her face under her hood.

“Remind me who this one is, exactly,” he said to his companion. “A girl?”

“A doll.” Ansem’s bright gaze flickered to her. “One of the first.”

“Hm. And whose heart does it have?”

“Its own.”

“Its own…Interesting.” But he didn’t sound terribly interested. “Why doesn’t it behave like the other one, then? The boy. That one talks.”

Xion stared expressionless at the young Xehanort. It felt like gazing into a mirror.

“The other was made in Riku’s image,” said Ansem. “This one is in Sora’s. Its light was very powerful. Difficult to quench.”

Xehanort assessed her with new appreciation.

“Really? That’s good, then. The brighter the light, the deeper its shadow.”

Ansem nodded. Xehanort turned away and gazed over the Keyblade graveyard.

“Still…” he sighed, with a touch of dissatisfaction, “I would rather have had the real Sora. Without him, the light would have faltered already.”

“Perhaps so. Yet we must make due with the tools at our disposal. We have no choice.”

Before, the part of her that wanted to react to this would have squirmed beneath the clouds of ink inside her mind. Now even that faint instinct had been drowned. The two people before her might as well have been speaking another language, for all she cared for their comments.

“A copy of a copy,” Xehanort mused, “instead of the real thing. But if that’s all we have, then so be it. Whatever it takes...”

He glanced to her, as if he’d only just remembered she was still there.

“Go,” he said.

An order.

She went, going nowhere but away, her boots making footprints that the wind erased behind her, leaving no trace of her path. She walked straight and steadily, as if lost in thought, but no thoughts flickered through the darkness that filled her. It obscured everything—thought, feeling, memory. If someone had stopped her and asked her name, she could not have told it to them.

Soon she found herself among the Keyblades. The wind clinked their dangling keychains like a chorus of metallic voices, tiny and powerless. She stood still in their midst, unthinking.

Instinct more than any curiosity moved her to touch the handle of the nearest, but it had not the warm solid strength of the one she could call for herself. As soon as she brushed the weather-blasted handle, it cracked beneath her fingertips, flaking away into rust and dust, its shape little more than an illusion held together by the nature of the Keyblade’s magic. She let go of it, watching the wind blow fragments of it away in sputtering sparks.

Once, that she could just barely recall, she had stayed in Twilight Town long enough to see nightfall, and the changes it had wrought. The sleepy sun had bowed its head and gone away completely, and in the dark all the hills of the town had lit up, shining with street lamps and storefronts and the warm window panes of houses. It had been beautiful, in its own way.

Yet as the night grew stronger, the lights began to go out. Stores closed, and street lamps extinguished after curfew, and by midnight almost all the windows of the scattered houses had dimmed too. The world she knew so well had vanished under darkness, as if it had never been there at all and never would be again. Only a few little lights had flickered here and there, scattered, fragile, alone.

That was how it was inside her, though she could not consciously think it. Perhaps in one corner of one window of one house, tucked away on the most distant part of the hillside, there were a few dim hints of something shining behind a curtain, happy memories or a friend’s name, but if so she could not sense it now. All she felt was an emotionless purpose, and the memory of fear, and of anger, and of pain.

All the light of the worlds could not hope to stand against them, she knew, when the time finally came. Not here in this place. Fate had already decided the outcome.

Xion walked away from the Keyblades by the same straight route she had come. Inside of her, the last rays of twilight vanished beyond the horizon. All was dark and quiet, except for the languid pulsing of the presence in her heart.

* * *

She keeps coming back to talk to him. In the evenings, usually, after a long day spent with the others, because it’s better than going straight from the bustle and noise of new friendships to the emptiness of her makeshift bedroom, its corners thick with stale shadows.

What he is to her, she doesn’t know, because the only words she knows are _friend, enemy, comrade, master_ and Even is none of these. But he always listens to her, no matter how busy or tired he is, and it’s a relief to be able to talk to someone without having to actually say everything, to never have to try and explain (the way she’d tried and failed to explain) exactly how it felt to have a shard of burning darkness stabbed deep into her heart. More importantly, talking to him can’t hurt anything, the way she worries things might turn awkward if she admits absolutely everything to Roxas and Lea. The ties that bind her to the two of them are her most precious possessions, and here in this room there’s no way to damage them, no way to accidentally weaken those sacred bonds with an ill-phrased word or admission. The stakes here are far lower, the audience far less important.

Somehow he never seems to get bored of it, even when she doesn’t have much to say. He listens to a dream where the Sora and Riku she’s coming to know had morphed into Vanitas and the other, darker Riku, and won’t let her apologize for recounting it.

“Don’t be silly, girl. You couldn’t waste my time even if you wanted to, on sheer principle. After all, you’re the most important thing I’ve ever done.”

 _That I’ve ever done_ —another new fact she’s learned here, a fact that she’s only just beginning to get a grip on. That she can hold a conversation with the person who created her is an unusual luxury, one that very few of her friends share. Roxas has no particular creator, and Lea claims that though two people made him and that he’d loved them for it, he can’t remember their faces anymore, try though he might. Nor can Ventus or Kairi (they’ve forgotten, too), nor can Terra (he never knew them in the first place), and if Aqua and Isa can remember who they came from, they won’t talk about it much. Only Sora and Riku share Xion’s odd privilege, and even they can’t just wander down the hall after dinner to ask whatever’s popped into their head. They have go home for that.

Funny, almost, that it took her so long to come ask for answers—that she’d been so afraid of it, out of habit. In her first life she had fought for answers about herself that few had and none wanted to relinquish, and now all of a sudden they’re all here (if she wants them) and cost absolutely nothing. All she has to do is ask.

“I was still scared of you, I guess,” she admits one evening. “That’s why I didn’t come earlier. Before, you were really...creepy.”

Even laughs, but it’s soft and tired, a pathetic echo of Vexen’s high cackle.

“Was I? Good. I tried my best to be. Perhaps I overshot the mark...but that was safer than the alternative.”

“Wasn’t that hard, though? To fake it all the time like that?”

“Mm...it was less difficult than one might suspect. I had only to pretend to be what I was for many years. But yes, it did become trying at times.”

The things he tells her have an air of authority that she comes to appreciate. In her first life she had only cryptic riddles and unkind jests and the guesswork of friends who knew no more than she did, but Even’s explanations are quite different. When he says things like _you’re a remarkable girl,_ it’s not a friend dutifully trying to cheer her up, or an acquaintance being polite for politeness’s sake. It sounds more like something that might actually be true.

* * *

“Too slow.”

Already she ached, bruised in every place the masked boy had landed a blow. She hadn’t wanted to fight, but he’d forced her to defend herself (why? out of boredom? spite?), and she struggled to her hands and knees and spat out a mouthful of the brown dust of the badlands, gasping for breath. She tried to stand and staggered, catching herself on one knee before she crumpled.

“Is that all you’ve got? Pathetic. You never should have made the cut.”

“Shut... _up…”_

“Make me.”

The blow to the head so dizzied her that she reeled, unable even to cry out as her cheek hit the dirt.

“You’ve got a Keyblade. You should be able to put up a better fight.”

“We’re not...supposed...to fight…”

She struggled to her feet. From somewhere nearby came quiet laughter, Marluxia or one of the others who had nothing better to do than watch snarling pups play tug-of-war over a bone. Vanitas tried to hit her again, but she blocked it with her own blade just in time.

“That’s more like it.” Through his mask she could hear his grin. “Come on, prove you deserve that Keyblade. It’s not even really yours, is it?”

It _was_ hers, she thought fiercely. She’d thirsted for it since her very first glimpse of its power, since the very first time she’d dared to take the black blade down off the wall without the master’s permission…

...but when had that happened? Not in the World That Never Was...

Vanitas lunged for her, but she rolled out of the way just in time, glancing him with a parting strike on the back of the leg that only made him laugh. He would have stabbed down at her face had she not scrambled out of the way, and they traded a few blows more before they were interrupted by an indignant snarl she’d heard often enough, whenever Vanitas had picked on the Riku Replica in this same way.

 _“What_ have I told you about this sort of thing, you miserable oaf—”

Vanitas scoffed at the approaching figure, unintimidated despite how the much taller Vexen loomed over him.

“What, afraid I’ll break her?” He laughed. “You can just make another one. That’s all you’re good for.”

“I could indeed manufacture a replacement,” was the annoyed reply, “but I would rather not. Certainly not when I’m so tantalizingly close to the theoretical breakthrough I’ve been striving towards for so long. I can hardly afford to waste my valuable time on pointless busywork, mopping up after a belligerent reprobate—as I had _thought_ I already made clear to you. Then again, I suppose a mind as insufferably dull as yours might need to hear it more than once...”

“Watch your mouth.”

“I would suggest to you the same, boy.” Vexen’s sneer was reflected in Vanitas’s dusty mask. “And if you won’t listen to reason, then perhaps your dear master can instill some sense in you.”

“He doesn’t care what I do.”

“Well, he cares what _I_ do, and forcing us to scrap a perfectly serviceable vessel on account of your foolishness is hardly to be tolerated. Go and expend your enthusiasm on more productive pursuits, you wretched little cretin.”

For a moment it seemed as if Vanitas were sizing him up, weighing the potential amusement in possibly attacking him too, but soon enough he shrugged away his Keyblade and departed with a final insult that made Vexen seethe, muttering to himself.

“The utter nerve of this feeble-minded rabble. My greatest scientific achievement...Have these imbeciles _no_ grasp of the time required, the sheer complexities…”

He glared at Xion, as though blaming her for his foul mood. She did not move or speak when he swept over and glared, scanning her for damage with an annoyed expression that nevertheless held a tinge of that strange, ever-present hunger. Xion was not bothered by it anymore. Nothing so mundane could bother her now.

“Are you injured, girl?”

She did not reply, because the answer was obvious, and after looking her up and down he seemed to realize it.

“Very good.” He turned away. “Because I’m already far too busy without having to waste time fixing you. Do keep out of trouble, if you can.” He smiled coldly over his shoulder. “After all, you’re a particularly... _intriguing_ specimen. Yes indeed...”

* * *

“Do you ever have nightmares too? About...things that happened.”

He’s writing in a logbook, jotting down inscrutable notes with practiced haste, but the question makes him stop and look up.

“Nightmares? Oh yes. Certainly.”

Xion nurses her tea, trying to decide whether this is a comfort. That someone who has existed so much longer than her can suffer the same kind of damage is more evidence that perhaps her plight isn’t as unnatural as she first assumed. Nearly two weeks have gone by in peace, the longest stretch ever, but last night the streak was broken. The fight on the clock tower went differently last night. Her golden eyes and blackened heart gave her the strength to tear a screaming Roxas to pieces.

“I just keep thinking…” The hot mug stings her bare palms as she clutches it tighter. “What if all of it never goes away? What if...I’ll always have bad dreams sometimes?”

“I suppose that’s possible. It’s not an unheard of effect, for memories that are especially traumatic.”

“I wish I could just...forget everything that happened to me.” Her breath makes the whorls of steam coming up from her tea quiver and dissipate. “I mean...everything bad.”

“Inadvisable, I should think. From all I’ve heard, it sounds as if you’d forget half your life in that case.”

Her brow furrows as she mulls over this notion, sipping her tea while he keeps scribbling, his long hair falling into his face as he writes.

Unconsciously she reaches up to touch the blue pendant hanging from her necklace, the latest of many gifts received over laughter and ice cream in the sunny courtyard. She’s beginning to own things now, as others’ generosity and her own curiosity build on each other little by little, but Lea gave her this the other day and claimed it was from Isa. No other explanation came with it, yet somehow that makes sense. She can understand not being sure of what to say, or of how to say it, or of whether saying anything will do any good to begin with. It’s a start, at least.

“Do you know…”

She sets her mug onto the desk, and the _clink_ makes Even look up.

“I mean...when you do think it will stop hurting? The memories.” She hesitates. “The...bad ones.”

“Mm...Well, it will always hurt a little, I think. That is memory’s curse.”

“It doesn’t mean I’m...broken?”

“It means that you are real.”

They look at one another, and he reads her better than she expects him to, because one eyebrow raises.

“You don’t believe me?” he asks pointedly. Xion looks away.

“It’s not that. I just...” A hand reaches up to touch the pendant again, rubbing it with her thumb. “I guess...I’m not sure what being ‘real’ means yet. Before, everyone always told me I wasn’t real...everyone except my friends. And everything that happened to me...I always thought it was all because I wasn’t real. I thought, if I _were_ a real person, then...it wouldn’t have been so bad. I wouldn’t have had so many problems.”

He smoothes out a creased corner of his logbook.

“If only that were so, child. But I’m afraid problems are unavoidable in life.”

That’s what Aqua said too, once. Aqua and Riku both.

Xion thinks in silence for long enough that she finishes her tea. By the time it’s gone, another question has come to her.

“I’ve...been wondering something lately. Something else, I mean. Am I...like you?”

He looks up at once from his work, bemused.

“I beg your pardon? In what sense?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking about it a little.” She has to gather up her scattered thoughts one by one, arranging them into something coherent. “I’m me, but...I’ve always been someone else, too. I have Kairi’s face, and Roxas’s powers, and...for a while, I had Sora’s memories. And then...someone else’s heart.”

The yellow of their many eyes burns in her mind, like the eyes of animals shining in the dark.

“All those people made me who I am, in a way, because I got something from all of them. But actually, the truth is...you’re the one who made me. Right? So does that mean...there’s something about me that I get from you? Even though I didn’t know you before?”

Even laughs at the notion, but gently.

“I would say no,” he says. “Certainly it’s not as if I intended you to become who you are, or indeed, anticipated that you would ‘be’ anyone at all. But you’ve developed far beyond even my most ambitious predictions. You’re nothing short of a miracle.”

It would be melodramatic if one of her friends said it—too much to take seriously. Not so with him. He’s not the sort of person who would lie to make her feel better. Still…‘miracle’ seems a bit much, because Xion doesn’t feel like one, particularly. She just feels like herself.

“I did work very hard on you, you know,” Even says, “for quite a long time. You can’t expect me not to be proud.”

“You’re proud of me for just...being alive?”

“And why shouldn’t I be?”

She doesn’t have a counterargument. After all, she doesn’t exist because of chance or fate, for all that she owes them, and she doesn’t exist because of Roxas and Lea, though they mean more to her than anything. She exists because one person—this person, once a stranger and still a little strange—worked very hard, all alone, for a long time. An odd thought, but perhaps not unpleasant. Certainly it’s better than being all the things she once thought she was: a fake, a mistake, an accident.

“So then...I really don’t get anything from you?”

“Oh, I think not, Xion.” He smiles fondly. “You’re very easy to like, you know. You’re not like me at all.”

* * *

Above the ruins blazed a shimmering aura of more stars than could have been counted in a lifetime of lifetimes, each one a world, each light a heart whose brightness was an affront to the living dark inside her. The pair of them were two mismatched shadows in their coats, one tall and one small, two smears of pitch black in the silent, empty night.

Why he’d summoned her, she did not know.

“Is it time?” she asked, instead of offering any greeting.

“Time? Yes, very nearly, I believe. It seems that Xehanort will get his war after all.”

“Where are the others?”

Vexen did not answer. Instead he turned to look all around them, at the bare earth and the wind-bitten rocks, at the ruined stone walls that rose like chunks of raw midnight to swallow the diamond stars. Empty. All empty and quiet. Only the wind sighed and sang to them, slithering over dust, into cracks between walls and archways.

He knelt to see her better. Xion stared at him numbly, her yellow eyes full of stars.

Soon, very soon, the guardians of light would come. And then...

A spasm contorted Vexen’s gaunt face like a mirror shattering into a thousand glittering shards, and suddenly his large eyes were wide, his features stretched taut, skeletal, terrified. He reached out and grabbed her by the upper arms, very tightly, so tightly she almost gasped.

The part of her mind that still worked wondered at the abruptness of the change. Was that...fear, in his face? Perhaps so. Fear, and other things that she didn’t recognize—intense, sharp, far too bright.

How odd.

 _“Listen to me.”_ Vexen’s grip on her shoulders tightened so hard that she almost cried out. “Xion, can you hear me? Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

Of course she understood. A pointless question.

“Xion, you must flee.” Odd too that his voice was so urgent, so hoarse, kept so low. He spoke as if there were a noose around his neck. “Your friends will be here sooner rather than later, and if you confront them, they will destroy you. They will have to. Your only hope is not to take part.”

This she didn’t understand. When had she ever had any friends? Growing up on the islands, she had always kept others at arm’s length. Her first real friend she hadn’t met until later, the blue-blooded boy in white with the playful, confident smile, his dark hair tied in a fantail.

Or...maybe the boy had been...blond? With shorter hair...

It was all so hard to remember.

“You must go away,” Vexen urged. “Far away, right now, before anything happens. Come with me and I’ll take you somewhere safe. The others can look after you until—”

Away? Away where? Why? She was needed for the great battle, as they all were.

No...not all of them. Not this one. This one wasn’t strong enough.

“—talk to your brother, but it was no use, he wouldn’t listen to me, he’s too far gone. Xion—”

That familiar hungry look stretched his lined face taut. Not just hungry, she realized up close, but starving, aching between each breath with the almighty desperation of it. His fingers felt as though they would leave bruises through her coat.

She thought he was shaking her shoulders until she realized it was he who was trembling, not her.

“Xion, if you can hear me—if there is anything left of whomever you became— _you must flee._ Do you hear me? You must not allow yourself to be destroyed.”

Never, never, never. An absurd suggestion. She had to be there, at the final clash of light and dark, because the battle was the only thing that mattered. The darkness was the only thing that was real.

“Please, girl, I beg of you—”

“Traitor.”

Vexen looked as though she’d slapped him.

“No, no, _no_ —Xion, _you must lis—”_

The Keyblade appeared in a shower of sparks, so quickly that he did not have time to avoid the blow. Her strike caught him hard enough to stun him, nearly knocking him down, and he righted himself with blood streaming from a gash on the side of his temple, running down his hollow cheek and off his chin.

She raised her Keyblade to aim another hit, but he grabbed her wrist to stop it. At once she called magic into her hand, fire bursting forth in scarlet blooms to envelop her gloved fist, searing into his coat and the flesh of his arm. He let go with a cry of pain and staggered away, out of reach.

Wordlessly she pointed her weapon at him.

“Xion, if I survive—”

His will was not their will. He could not be trusted.

“—I will do everything in my power to bring you both back again. If there’s anything left of either of you...anything at all...and anything left of me...”

His stricken voice passed through her like an empty wind. The Keyblade was warm in her hand, as warm as the surge of magical flames had been.

“I swear it to you, child,” he said hoarsely. “If I live, I will do anything to put you right. Whatever it takes.”

He was gone before her lunging strike landed, swept away into a pool of darkness. The head of her Keyblade embedded itself uselessly into the empty earth left behind him, and suddenly she was alone in the vast silence of the starlit ruins. The emptiness deafened her, magnified her rushing pulse.

She did not understand what had just happened. Anger and pain and hate, she understood, but just now she had glimpsed something else—another sort of darkness, equally as powerful as those, yet one whose exact nature she could not name. It was something related to sadness, but she could not grasp it beyond that. Grief, perhaps. Remorse.

How odd.

* * *

“But...weren’t you scared?”

“Of what?”

“Of him.” She still doesn’t like saying his name aloud, even now. It feels like something that simple could bring him back from the dead. “Of everything. I mean...”

Xion knows what she wants to say, in her head, but it’s hard to actually articulate. For herself, she can’t imagine coming back—all in one piece, whole and hale and full of light, with all her friends beside her and nothing to keep them apart—and at once running away, without a word, back into the depths of the shadows. Across the desk, Even regards her with an expression equal parts tired and amused.

“I wasn’t afraid at first, no. I confess I had...rather little concern for my own well-being.”

“But you didn’t tell anyone, right?”

“That I had infiltrated the Organization? No, no. It was safer that way.”

“Then, everyone else...” She pictures them as she’s come to know them now: the deep-voiced blond man like a tired old lion, the talkative young man in the white coat, the tall guards. “But they could have helped you, if you’d asked them. Couldn’t they?”

Even sets down the pile of papers he’d been sorting through, the rustle of them like a sigh.

“Potentially, I suppose. But I had no right to endanger them all.”

“But you could have died,” Xion says, imagining it, “and...they wouldn’t have known you were trying to help. They would all have thought that you just...didn’t care.”

It’s much worse than being forgotten, she thinks, the way she herself was forgotten. Better forgotten than utterly despised.

Even smiles at her, and the smile is pained, a habit, a fiction. The lines on his face write out the guilt of a thousand thousand thousand sins, the weariness of a man who could prove, with diagrammed facts and figures, that the world would have been better had he never entered into it.

“I did what I had to do, Xion. It’s really no more complicated than that.”

“But you still could have told your friends,” she insists. “Was it because...you thought you couldn’t trust them?”

“Not exactly that, no. It’s rather…”

He trails off, shuffling through more papers, but then stops.

“I wanted to tell them, of course. But I deemed it unwise. And I felt as though it were something I had to do on my own. What befell us was primarily my fault to begin with, so the burden fell to me to make things right. Even if…mm, well. Even if I perished in the attempt, and was remembered only as a madman. That was still preferable to doing nothing.” He looks to her. “Do you understand, Xion?”

She understands perfectly well.

* * *

“We need him alive. You know that.”

Seven lights there had to be, else the thirteen who sought the dark could not fulfill their mighty purpose. Seven hearts with seven lights to forge in fury the χ-Blade.

“We only need his heart in order to forge the key,” Xemnas reminded her. “We do not need his soul. Oh...but that’s right.” He smiled indulgently. “You were ‘friends.’ Then... _you_ take his life.”

A simple task. She was strong, and her Keyblade by its nature was made to sever heart from body.

The enemy, too battered to resist, only stared at her. She aimed her weapon at him.

“Who... _are_ you?” he whispered.

Far within her, below an ocean of oblivion, something crushed nearly to death weakly stirred.

Had a blow come next, she could have dodged on instinct, no matter how swift, but it was not a blow. The new enemy stepped in front of her drawn blade without any violence, catching the Keyblade’s teeth in one hand and pushing it aside gently, unafraid.

The darkness inside her writhed in sudden fury as she slammed her weapon against the hilt of his, again and again and again.

_“Don’t do this.”_

And the boy’s voice was not a voice but a glowing ember, a scrap of sunshine, a sliver of light that cut through the tenebrous haze everything within her had become, so bright that the excruciating intensity of him made her gasp. In her ears her shackled heartbeat roared as she swung again at him, panicking at the way the pain had soared, the way the sky on the horizon inside her had already lightened to a warm gray from the horrific brightness of his heart.

_“Wait...It’s all right! You can stop now!”_

Stop?

_“It’s all right…Xion.”_

Inside of her, dawn’s rays burst over the edge of her cracked and bleeding heart, spilling out of her in a tidal wave of memory, tears running hot down her cheeks.

* * *

There is no name on the headstone, and no body buried beneath it. The empty grave tucked into a shaded corner of the gardens is only a symbol, an apology. But she understands that Even needs the solace of this ritual, however futile it might be, and so she’s indulged him at his invitation, helping to put on the finishing touches. Afterwards they sit on the bench across from it and admire the full effect, the morning breeze rippling the variegated flowers planted in a protective fairy ring around the slab of stone.

Neither of them says anything for a little while. Xion isn’t sure what to say, anyway; she’s only ever heard descriptions of what a funeral is, what it’s for, and she’s not sure if this quietude counts. Even’s silence is unusual for him. So lost is he in his own somber thoughts that she has to break the silence herself after a few minutes, picking up their conversation from before.

“So do you really think...you can bring her back?”

He pulls himself out of his reverie. “Hrm? Beg pardon?”

“Naminé. Is there really a chance for her?”

“I’m...not certain, to be frank.”

“But you’re going to try?”

“I must, Xion. I was cruel to her...we all were. We owe her nothing less.” He looks balefully over at the headstone. “And helping her is all that I can do for him.”

Xion looks at the stone too, remembering Naminé’s familiar face, remembering the story Riku told everyone of how the other Riku had been. The boy she knew so briefly had been him only at his worst, and in the end, the last echo of his broken spirit had helped them all the only way he could.

“You can’t bring him back, too?” she asks. Even only sighs.

“No. Not if he’s truly gone. If he chose to go...beyond, where hearts are meant to go...then there can be no retrieving him. That is death.”

Silence again.

Xion worries at a bracelet Aqua gave her, watching the dappled shadows of blossom-laden branches wave back and forth over the spring grass. She hasn’t had a nightmare in a while—not a proper one, one that wakes her—and though sometimes her sleep is restless, it’s never so uncomfortable as it first was. Terra had told her it would get better, and she hadn’t quite believed him, but lately it’s seeming as though he’s right. If even he is having fewer nightmares, then maybe time does help to heal wounds. Xehanort is still gone, as gone today as he was the first day, and he can’t hurt them anymore. Only memories are left, and memories have only as much power as they choose to give.

The thing she needs to say rests heavy in the pit of her stomach, and she turns her bracelet around and around on her wrist, thinking about how best to put it. After a while she realizes there’s no point in being indirect, that he knows already and it’s best to just say it plain, to get it over with. She lets go of the bracelet.

“The others found a house.”

She doesn’t have to elaborate, at least; this news has already made the rounds. After weeks of searching and leads that fell through, Lea and Isa have finally, miraculously, found a place to rent in Twilight Town that fits their meager budget. With enough patience and elbow grease, it could be a new start. Already they’re beginning the repairs.

“I had heard something to that effect,” Even admits. “When will they be leaving?”

“I’m not sure. They said it needs a lot of work first.”

To his credit, she almost can’t tell. But he’s out of practice acting, and so the glimmer of hope he’s conjured for himself is obvious, a little light at the back of his bright green eyes.

“I’m going with them,” she says.

The little light goes out, and he looks away, smiling.

“A silly question. Of course...you’d like nothing better.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just...Lea and Roxas are my friends. My best friends.” (She feels she has to clarify, because there are more friends now, more than she could ever have dreamed of up on the clock tower.) “I care about them more than anything. And they care about me, too.”

“Naturally. Though, you do realize...”

He hesitates.

“This place...It could be a home to you, Xion. If you wished it. You’ll always have a room in the castle, and you will always be welcome here, under any circumstances. If ever you wanted…”

He stops himself, not frowning but worried, almost, in his pensiveness.

“That is, if you ever did wish to stay here, I would do my best for you. I would teach you, if you were interested. How would you like that?”

“Um. I’ll think about it.”

She knows he knows that she’s lying, but it’s the best she can do for him and he accepts it, his smile faint.

“Thank you, girl. That’s all I ask.”

Around the grave, the wind stirs the pastel carpet of flowers, making them nod and rustle, a murmuring chorus.

“Xion?”

“Yes?”

“I never...chose...to leave you. When you were born. You do understand that, don’t you?”

She nods. He sighs and smiles wearily.

“Good. And...I hope you know that I’m sorry for it. That is, for having abandoned you. Perhaps if I had been stronger...”

But he cuts himself off, as if in admonishment, then passes a hand over his face, rubbing the bridge of his nose with a faint grimace.

“Well. It hardly matters now, does it? And I daresay it’s better this way. If I’m honest with myself.”

“Better how?”

“If I had known you, I would have failed you.” He glances over at the headstone. “The way that I failed him.”

“Oh.”

She doesn’t know what else to say. Even looks up at the towering spires of the castle looming beyond the garden wall, its renovated turrets gleaming white in the sun.

“This world is mending,” he says aloud, as if trying to convince himself, “but it will take time. Perhaps a very long time. But in another world, you can have a normal life—the life a child ought to have. And besides...There are things you need to learn that I couldn’t possibly teach you.”

“Like what?”

“Important things.” He brushes dirt off the hem of his coat. “How to make friends, for instance. How to be happy.”

Xion looks up at the castle too, taking in all the shining stone and polished metal, the whir and click of oiled machinery that’s only recently been repaired to working order. She’s grown to like it, for what it is, and yet it’s not the clock tower, with its bells and chimes and the rumble of departing trains.

“Maybe...you could come to Twilight Town too,” she says hesitantly. “I mean...if you wanted. Couldn’t you?”

He laughs quietly.

“No, Xion, I’m afraid that I couldn’t. I have too much left to atone for here. Far too much.”

She considers this, turning the claim over in her mind as best she can. Her own future is blurry but bright, so blindingly bright that she can hardly look at it: Twilight Town for certain, and school almost nearly as certain, and long happy days spent with Roxas and Lea full of friendship and laughter and joy. After a life of missions, her final mission is to build a life, whatever that means, with the people she loves more than anything. Not even the worst nightmare can put a stop to that.

For the man sitting next to her, she senses, there’s another future entirely. He is not young, and however many years are left to him will be spent stumbling down a long dark road until he can’t anymore, and then crawling until he can’t anymore, and then dying with the hope that the distance he’s travelled will have somehow, by some miracle, been enough.

When he at last gets up from the bench, she follows him. The funeral, if that’s what it was, is over.

Together they meander up the cracked stone path that leads back to the castle, Xion walking ahead, Even following behind at a slower pace. The gardens retain enough of their original beauty to be peaceful despite their many upturned and barren patches, and sometimes a bird sings in a flowering tree, punctuating the spring breeze with a few hopeful warbles. She hurries, but not too much, not so quickly that she leaves Even too far behind. Still—she wants to make it back more urgently than he does. Her friends are waiting for her, after all.

“Xion?”

She stops in the middle of the pathway, turning to look up at him as he catches up with her.

“Xion...I know I’ve said it, but it bears repeating: no matter where you go or what you do, you will always be my responsibility. I’ll do anything I can to help you—anything you need, for the rest of my life. You’ve only to ask it of me.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she says at once. “I mean...You don’t owe me anything.”

“But I do.”

He brushes a hand over the top of her head.

“I brought you into the world, Xion. I owe you everything there is. But you’re a strong girl...stronger than you realize. You don’t need me. I expect you never will.”

He sounds proud of it, for some reason.

They keep walking—slower this time, keeping better pace with one another. As they walk, Xion’s many bracelets jangle together, and she can’t help but look at them and think of all those who gave them, the many people she’s come to know in the past few weeks, the old friends and the new. All those people laughing in the sunlight whose hearts shine together, the many friends she has to help her now, the many smiles that come after the tears. Sora and Riku and Kairi, Aqua and Terra and Ven, Roxas and Lea, even Isa and the others...

They’re all scarred, she knows now, even if only a few wear those scars on the skin, and their wounds are of every kind imaginable. Some shallow and some deep, some self-inflicted and some inflicted on one other, some well-deserved and some wholly unjust. Once, she imagined it was possible to fix them all, to wipe away all the hurt as if it never happened, but she’s learned better over the past few weeks. Living life—a real life, not a Nobody’s parody—isn’t about pretending the bad never happened and the mistakes don’t matter and the pain isn’t real. But hurting doesn’t have to define her, and bad memories don’t mean that she’s broken. The darkness doesn’t get to control her heart. Not now. Never again.

“Hey, um...”

Even stops walking at the first hint of her voice, looking over his shoulder. Xion catches up to him.

“I was wondering...After I leave, I can still talk to you, right? Like...if I ever have more questions. Or...bad dreams.”

“Of course, Xion. I’d like nothing better.” He nods approvingly. “You may call on me any time, for any reason. Or for no reason at all, if you’re so inclined.”

“What if you’re really busy?”

He bends down to be closer to her eye level, almost kneeling. He always does this when he’s being especially serious, and there’s that hungry look again, as obvious as ever but muted, melancholy.

“I assure you, Xion, I’ll never be too busy to heed your concerns. I hope you understand that.”

She can read what this expression means now, this longing of his: he created her and wants to keep her close because of it. But he’s never demanded that, and as odd as it is, it’s also gratifying, knowing he’ll provide help and guidance without asking a single thing from her in return. Peculiar, in a way. Xion’s friends have always taught her that love means never giving up, digging in and holding on, fighting tooth and nail so that the person you care about won’t leave you. But maybe, she supposes, that isn’t always true. Maybe sometimes, when it would make them happier than you ever could, love means letting someone go.

Even touches her chin carefully, so that he can tilt her head up to better look into her blue eyes. Xion’s brow furrows.

“Dad? What’s wrong?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Only...” He admires her. “I know perfectly well that I would have failed you, if I had known you before. But I do wish...I had been allowed to try.”

“It’s not your fault.”

He hugs her. By now she’s been hugged enough times by enough other people to know how bad he is at it, stiff and clumsy, holding too tight for too long. His sweater vest itches, and beneath the itch there’s another texture, the hidden roughness of a long swathe of scar tissue slashed across his chest in the wake of a burn.

“It doesn’t matter,” he sighs, though he’s holding a little too tightly for that to be true. “You’re going to live a wonderful life, Xion. You’re going to be very happy.”

“What about you? What are you going to do?”

She closes her eyes when he puts a hand on her head, running fingers through her dark hair. Through his sweater, through the scar, she hears his steady heartbeat.

“Whatever I must, my child. Whatever it takes.”


End file.
